Loose Skin and Primal Eating

I am curious to know about people who have lost very large amounts of weight eating primal or paleo. I lost 25lbs so far and need to lose about 75 more (and then probably some more if I'm realistic and really get healthy once I get there). My big fear is loose skin - as it is I'm already covered in stretch marks from getting fat. Of course, I'm not going to let fear of loose skin stop me from continuing on my trek towards better health but I do wish I could avoid it.

Anyway, there seems to be some anecdotal evidence here and there that loose skin isn't as problematic with primal as it is with other diets. Logically it makes sense - you are nourishing your body with highly nutritious foods, eating adequate amounts of fat, maintaining muscle, etc etc. These are all things that I think would be conducive to good skin shrinkage.

That said, I was wondering if any one had any more information on this or were willing to share their personal stories. I know genetics, age, and how long you've been overweight play a huge role - there are many poeople who will have lose skin no matter what plan they follow - but still, it would be nice to know that it was less of a problem among primal eaters than others.

I'm 57 going on 58. I have lost about 68 pounds from my all-time high several years back. I figure I have about 15 pounds to go. I will probably reach my goal by the 1 year mark. I can see I will have little crinkles where I have stretch marks on my belly, but hey. I'm 57. I've already bought the bikini.

The only place where the loose skin is likely to be unacceptable is my upper arms. Not too much to do about it beyond surgery.

I'm 34 and lost 108 lbs doing a Primal Atkins diet over the last 14 months. I still have 20 to go to get to my "hot in a bikini" weight but I have no loose skin at all. I have some cellulite on the upper part of my back thighs but that's been there since as long as I can remember and even when I was much thinner.

His results are amazing! There's a blog post by Mark that discusses loose skin and links to a page from Ron Brown that I found very interesting.

The whole loose skin thing never made sense to me. Your skin is not some dead bag of keratin. It's a living organ that is continually replenished from the inside out. It costs your body to maintain it. What's the incentive to maintain more than you need? Also, I'm not sure that everyone means the same thing when they say "loose skin". I watched a program on TLC following two people, a man and a woman, who had each lost over 100 lbs. After their surgery, the surgeon wheeled in the "skin" on a gurney to show it to them. In both cases it was a band about 8-12" high that had wrapped around their whole body. But it was also 3-4" thick! You could see the fat on the inside. You didn't really get a good look at their scars, which suggested to me that they were pretty disturbing to look at. I certainly don't begrudge them the choice they made, but I'm not sure it would be the right one for me.

At my highest weight, I was 205, so I've lost 36% of my body weight. My belly is not bikini-ready. It's sort of the texture of a balloon after you've let the air out, lol.. I'm just glad I don't have hanging folds. There is clearly several lbs of fat there, because you can grab a handful. My stretch marks are actually from my 2 pregnancies, so I don't mind those. I am lucky that I'm not super-prone to them. My upper arms worry me a little more, because they really do look like old lady arms. However, I don't think there's so much skin there that it couldn't be filled out with muscle. My goal for the next year is to get down to 20% body fat and to be able to deadlift 1.5x my body weight. We'll see where my skin's at then.

I had a thread about this awhile back. I think it depends on the person. I've done a lot of research on dry skin brushing, and there is a lot of evidence to think it helps with cellulite, stretch marks and loose skin. Look into it. Also, they say taking an alfalfa supplement.